Hell's Gate

Their advance narrowed the gap steadily, bringing them within thirty yards of her hiding place. They continued to search with methodical, terrifying thoroughness. It was only a matter of time before one of those grim faced men thrust a sharp steel blade through a pile of branches and came sword-point-to-gun-muzzle with Shaylar or one of her companions. She didn't dare move her head even to look for Jathmar or Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl. She scarcely dared to breathe. Surely it couldn't be much longer now!

The same thought must have crossed chan Hagrahyl's mind. The nearest soldier was twenty yards out, and chan Hagrahyl stood up.

Without his rifle. Without even a handgun. He simply stood up, in the most stu

"If you don't mind, that's far enough," he said in a voice that sounded like someone talking to his grandmother, not to a pack of armed strangers who'd already murdered a friend of his.

He held his hands out in the open, empty, nonthreatening, trying to show them he was no danger. The men in the clearing whirled at the sound of his voice, then froze where they stood, taking stock through wide eyes. They stared from chan Hagrahyl's empty hands to his tense but pleasant smile, and two or three of them turned uncertainly toward the trees behind them, rather than towards the man Shaylar had thought was in charge.

Then she realized that that man wasn't frozen in surprise.

The sound of a voice shouting alien gibberish sent terror scalding through Garlath even as his mind shrieked the word: Enemy! The jabbering stranger thrust himself violently out of hiding, ready to strike with some terrifying murder weapon, and the sorry-assed men of Second Squad weren't even moving.

Terror fluttered at the back of Garlath's throat, like a trapped basilisk, yet even as it strangled him, a sudden wild exultation swept through him, as well.

I've got him! He's mine! Not Jasak Olderhan's, not anyone else's, but mine!

Visions of glory, of promotions and the adoration of all of Arcana roared through him like dragonfire, spreading to his fingertips and toes, and his arm came up.

Jasak saw Garlath's arbalest twitch as the stranger stood up, calling out in a friendly voice. He saw the weapon start to swing up, start to track around towards the voice.

"Hold fire!" he shouted. "Hold fire, Fifty Garlath! Damn it, I said hold?"

Thwack!

The crossbow quarrel hit chan Hagrahyl directly in the throat.

Shaylar screamed under Jathmar's feet, echoing his own shock. Blood drenched the pile of wood, spraying hot and terrible over chan Hagrahyl's hands as he clawed at the shaft, choking on blood and steel. And then he was falling backwards, against the pile of wood.

Jathmar snarled and threw his rifle to his shoulder, but Barris Kasell beat him to the first shot. The ex-soldier's rifle cracked like doomsday, and the bastard with the crossbow staggered. Jathmar's shot slammed into him a sliver of a second later, and then the entire survey crew opened up.

Sir Jasak Olderhan stared in horror. Thunder shook the world. Crack after sharp, ear-splitting crack tore the air, and he couldn't even see the weapons, let alone the men using them. Puffs of smoke jetted from the toppled timber here and there, and blood fountained from his commander of fifty. The projectiles smashing into Garlath exploded out of his back, ripping it open, turning him into so much torn and shredded meat.

He went down, and before Jasak could react to the stu

Chapter Eight

Darcel Kinlafia was worried.

The initial message from Shaylar?terse, shaken?had been to wild to believe, too threatening to grasp with anything but cold horror, and yet too vividly accurate to doubt. She'd sent him not only the message from chan Hagrahyl, but also the images of herself splashing down into the creek, watching Falsan die under her hands. Darcel had felt everything she'd felt, and he wanted to do murder. He wanted his hands around the throat of whoever had killed Falsan and put Shaylar through something so horrifying.

Worst of all, there was absolutely nothing Darcel could do to help. Even if Company-Captain Halifu emptied the entire half-built fort and set out now, Shaylar and Jathmar, Barris and Ghartoun?all of the people who'd become his family over the past several years were simply too far away.

And so he paced his solitary camp, not wanting even the company of Halifu's soldiers, since anyone's presence would rub him raw, like sand in a open wound.

My fault, he thought bitterly, even though he knew?in his saner moments?that it was a lie. He wasn't responsible for whatever was happening out there, but he was the one who'd sent them to meet it, because Darcel Kinlafia wasn't just a Voice; he was also a Portal Hound.

That wasn't the technical name for his secondary Talent, but it was the one everyone associated with the Portal Authority used. No one had yet found a way to actually detect and pinpoint the locations of portals, but a Hound had a special affinity to whatever disturbance in the fabric of creation brought them into existence. No Hound could reliably quantify what he sensed, he couldn't pluck distances and classifications out of thin air, and yet Darcel simply "knew" the compass bearing to the nearest portal. He had absolutely no way of knowing how far away it might be, but he knew which way to go to find the closest one.

Well, that wasn't entirely correct. A larger portal might appear to be closer than a smaller one which was actually much nearer to a Hound's physical location. But the Hounds, who were even rarer than Mappers of Jathmar's strength, were utterly invaluable to any exploration team.

It was Darcel who'd found the immense portal which had first admitted them to this universe. It was Darcel who'd realized that they'd stumbled upon yet another lobe of the cluster which had brought them here.

And it was Darcel Kinlafia who'd sent his dearest friends towards the nearest/strongest portal he'd been able to "scent" … and directly into the horror which had been awaiting Falsan.

Stop that! he snapped at himself. Ghartoun's one of the most experienced people in the game. He knows how to handle himself and a crew. They'll be all right. Surely they'll be all right.

Shalana's mercy, please let them be all right.

He'd already relayed Shaylar's message. Even now, it was rushing back along the transit chain, Voice to Voice, portal to portal, universe to universe, through dozens?hundreds?of telepathic Voices, all passing along the frantic message.

Warn the homeworld!

The Portal Authority wasn't designed to meet this kind of emergency. Oh, the notion had been bandied about, but not seriously. Not in the eighty years mankind had been exploring through the portals. There were?thank all the gods?forts at every portal, and larger military bases at central nodes, even this far out. But that was entirely to police the homeworld's own portal traffic and to provide security for settlers and survey crews threatened by bandits. The possibility of something like this had been only a theoretical one, and one which had become increasingly less likely seeming as exploration spread further and further outward with absolutely no sign of any other human civilization.

When Shaylar's warning had come in, he'd gone back through the portal to relay, then found Company-Captain Halifu and delivered the disturbing message to him in person. Grafin Halifu had dispatched Platoon-Captain Hulmok Arthag and half his cavalry platoon?the only one assigned to him?to find the civilian crew and escort them safely back, if they could only make rendezvous with one another in time.